~ …give that you may live, for to withhold is to perish. (Adapted from Kahlil Gibran)

MyNotes – Leverage Leadership: Chapter 2

With a few colleagues, we’ve started reading Leverage Leadership. Here’s a little about the book:

Paul Bambrick-Santoyo (Managing Director of Uncommon Schools) shows leaders how they can raise their schools to greatness by following a core set of principles. These seven principles, or “levers,” allow for consistent, transformational, and replicable growth. With intentional focus on these areas, leaders will leverage much more learning from the same amount of time investment. Fundamentally, each of these seven levers answers the core questions of school leadership: What should an effective leader do, and how and when should they do it.

I like the fact that it starts out with formulas and recipes for success. You know, “Do this and you’ll get these results.” Who wouldn’t like to be told what to do, and then what results to search for? I hope you’ll join me as I take notes on this book. And, I’m also adding questions that occur to me at the end.

Some questions are embedded in brackets [miguel’s questions].

My Notes

Chapter 2 – Observation and Feedback

You get highly effective teachers by coaching each and every teacher to do excellent work.

By receiving weekly observations and feedback, a teacher develops as much in one year as most teachers do in twenty. [Is there research to support this assertion?]

Observation and feedback are only fully effective when leaders systematically track which teachers have been observed, what feedback they have received, and whether that feedback has improved their practice.

The primary purpose of observation is to find the most effective ways to coach teachers to improve student learning.

Core commitment for observations:

weekly 15-minute observations of each teacher and

weekly 15-minute feedback meetings for every teacher in the building.

Model of observation and feedback:

Scheduled observations – frequent and regular

multiple, shorter observations, 15 mins long, back to back for an hour

locked in feedback meetings scheduled from beginning of year

feedback meeting combined with other meetings 4 times a year for whole meeting data analysis

What is happening in current public education that can prepare a child to contribute to a Disney/Pixar film?

Who is going to have the Communication, Collaborative, Creative, and Critical Thinking skills required to integrateglobal trends into their work in a manner that will offer something fresh and improve the world in some way?

A larger percentage of people are working from handheld devices instead of sitting in cubicles. What kinds of people can handle the responsibility of working without direct oversight? Who can be held responsible for generating knowledge-work from a distance that has the quality to compete on a global market?

Can our students leave high school and become digital technology engineers? Choreograph an award show opening number? Program a new iPad app? Coordinate a wedding and reception?